Demon's Games
by RLD Flame-point Callie-co
Summary: What if the apocalypse of NFA was the catastrophe responsible for transforming our world into Panem? In a world ruled by demons, Katniss' actions in the 74th Hunger Games sets off a chain of events that will lead her and Angel into a battle for the fate of the entire human race. Response to a challenge by Marcus S. Lazarus.
1. Welcome to the New Age

**Disclaimer: Angel and the Hunger Games are the intellectual property of Joss Whedon and Suzanne Collins, respectively, and the concept for this story belongs to Marcus S. Lazarus. Only the execution of it is mine.**

**Timeline: first part of this chapter picks up from the end of NFA, then jumps to the end of the 74th Hunger Games. **

**Pairings: TBA as the rules of the challenge didn't specify any and I haven't decided yet. Unless things develop differently as I go on, I'll probably stick to canon couples.**

"Let's go to work."

With Angel in the lead, the remaining members of his team charged forward to meet the approaching army. Hack, slash, tear, punch, kick, bite, behead…the world dissolved into a blur of violent motion as they clashed with one demon after another, and another, and another - the horde came on in endless waves, and the ceaseless battle was a tide that swept them up and washed away everything else, the grief over Wesley's death and Lorne's departure, the worry over what else the senior partners might throw at them if by some miracle they survived this battle…

Then the pungent scent of human blood suffused the air, drawing the attention of every vampire present. Gunn, already weakened by his previous injury, had just gotten a chunk torn out of him by something with very long claws, spraying a geyser of blood across the alley. Angel threw aside a demon that was trying to attack him from the side in time to get a clear view of Gunn using the last of his strength to bury a blade in the thing's throat before his body realized it was dying and gave out. He crumpled to the ground and never got up again. He had beaten Illyria's estimate of how long he would last - ten minutes at best - by a full five minutes.

There was no time to mourn or even retrieve his body, because the army continued to pour in on them, and they were now outnumbered a million to three instead of four. The odds against them worsened yet again when four demons got hold of Spike; they each seized a limb and pulled as if to draw and quarter him, and then a fifth grabbed his head and removed it with a single mighty yank.

Spike's body crumbled into a shower of dust, leaving Angel feeling oddly bereft. He couldn't exactly say he was fond of his grand-childe - the man was far too good at pushing his buttons - yet he'd grown used to having Spike around. Whether as an ally or an enemy, Spike had been part of Angel's existence for so long that Angel had believed he would always be there, and the prospect was no longer as repulsive as it had once been. Now he was gone, taken down by a pack of berserker demons of all things. At least it had taken five of them to destroy him; Spike would be proud that he hadn't gone down easily.

The ground shuddered, and Angel realized he wasn't just feeling shaken after witnessing Spike's demise - the earth actually was shaking as the giant creature whose silhouette he'd glimpsed at a distance lumbered closer, trampling a great number of demons on its own side. It let out a deafening roar when it saw Angel and swung a weapon resembling a huge meat tenderizer at him…

###

Angel woke with a start, breathing hard after reliving that long-ago clash with the Senior Partners' army. It was that time of year again; the nightmares always got particularly bad during the Games. The world he lived in now provided a wide variety of subject matter for nightmares, but throughout the Hunger Games he dreamed exclusively of the battle that had claimed the lives of Spike, Gunn, and Wesley. It only seemed right that one brutal slaughter brought back memories of another, which only ended when he and Illyria had managed to kill the giant by leaping onto its shoulders and sawing through its neck. It crushed the remainder of the army, those that hadn't already been killed by Angel's team or fled when one of their own began stepping on them, as it fell to the ground in its death throes.

Afterward, the two of them that were left thought they'd won; only later did they realize how horrifyingly wrong they were. The demonic legion the Senior Partners sicced on them hadn't been their opposition in some great final battle but a mere distraction - assassinating the Circle of the Black Thorn proved beyond doubt that Angel could never be won over to the side of evil, so the Senior Partners wanted him out of the way while they put their millennia-old plans for a real apocalypse into play.

Wolfram and Hart's influence had already spread to every corner of the globe, and now they finally used it to orchestrate the total collapse of human society, which they then rebuilt into a demon's paradise. North America was reorganized into a single nation called Panem, its human population imprisoned in twelve districts which were actually little more than labor camps where they were forced to spend their lives toiling in service to the demons who now ruled the world.

Of course, some demons required more than the fruits of their subjects' labor, and so the Hunger Games were born. The humans thought the Games were designed to remind them of the Capitol's power and the uselessness of resisting it, but if that was their only purpose the bodies of fallen tributes could at least be returned to their families for a proper burial. No bodies were ever returned, however, because the 'tributes' were in reality sacrifices for demons who preferred to dine on - or had other, even more gruesome uses for - human flesh, and the fact that these were the bodies of humans who had slaughtered each other made them all the tastier. Nearly every single creature spat out by any of the various hell dimensions thrived on the orgy of violence and corruption that was the Hunger Games, delighting in pitting mankind against itself and turning children, who should have been the most innocent among them, into murderers.

Intercontinental travel was impossible thanks to magical barriers so there was no way of knowing if the rest of the world was this bad, if there were Hunger Games everywhere; Angel thought things might be better elsewhere - surely Buffy and all her Slayers, who last he'd heard had taken up residence somewhere in Europe, wouldn't have let their home sink to this level - but he couldn't know for sure unless he found some way of breaking the boundary around North America.

Breaking the boundary, however, would mean breaking the Senior Partners' hold on power, which was beginning to seem impossible. Seventy years after the apocalypse they had somehow managed to undo or at least block the effects of Willow's Slayer activation spell; there must be potential Slayers in Panem, but none of them ever came into their powers. As far as Angel could tell, Panem hadn't had a Slayer in three hundred years, and with nearly every other supernatural entity either cowed into submission or willingly aligning themselves with Wolfram and Hart, Angel and Illyria, the one true ally he had left, were hopelessly outnumbered.

_Speak of the devil, and she will appear,_ he thought as Illyria forced his door open. "I have been monitoring the Games," she announced unnecessarily - she _always_ watched the Games whereas Angel refused to, preferring instead to stay in his quarters and read the books Wesley, Fred, and Gunn had left behind. Gunn's taste in reading material ran mostly to comic books - at least before his brain was altered to make him a legal expert - which were now yellowed with age and frayed around the edges, some of Wesley's books which had already been ancient when he had them were ready to fall apart, and Angel pretty much had them all memorized…still, the choice between rereading his old friends' favorites or watching the Hunger Games was never hard.

"There has been a development," Illyria continued, ignoring his scowl. "I believe it is significant, but you should see it for yourself."

Although reluctant, Angel knew she wouldn't try to get him to watch anything pertaining to the Games without a very good reason, so he followed her to the viewing room they had set up in order to keep an eye out for any sign that the people had had enough and were ready to overthrow their demonic overlords; however, as the decades went by with no indication that rebellion was imminent, Angel had spent less and less time in there. Still, the TVs stayed - at least they provided a diversion for Illyria.

Frozen onscreen was what appeared to be a scene from the end of this year's Games; there were only two tributes left standing, a blond boy and a girl with dark hair in a long braid. The girl had a bow and arrows, while the boy appeared to be unarmed. She would take him down easily. Instead, when the playback commenced, the girl threw away her weapon and took out a handful of nightlock berries.

When the boy grabbed her arm to stop her from eating them, she took his hand and poured some of the berries into his palm, keeping half for herself. "Trust me." A meaningful look passed between them, an unspoken agreement that neither of them would leave without the other.

"Together?" the boy asked.

"Together," she confirmed.

They began counting, the boy pausing to finger the girl's braid when they got to two. On three, they both raised the berries to their mouths.

"They love one another," Illyria explained as Angel stared at the screen. "Both of them come from District Twelve, and their affair became a recurring theme throughout the Games. There was even talk of allowing two victors from the same district so that both could leave the arena alive, but of course the decision was revoked once all the other tributes were dead. There can only be one victor; they must have the correct number of dead to sacrifice, yet they also need a victor to provide the feelings of guilt and shame that are more valuable to certain of their ilk than a corpse." A puzzled frown briefly creased her face; even after a few centuries in the modern world she still had some difficulty grasping the fact that there were demons to whom humans were more valuable alive than dead.

With both remaining tributes poised to end their lives and deprive the Capitol of their 'living sacrifice', the voice of Claudius Templesmith boomed through the speakers, yelling, "Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the victors of the seventy-fourth annual Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark of District Twelve!"

Illyria's ice-blue eyes flicked toward Angel to gauge his reaction. "You once said overthrowing the Wolf, Ram, and Hart and their allies will be impossible until others are ready to defy their masters and fight alongside us. Is Katniss Everdeen's audacious ploy the act of defiance you have been waiting for?"

Angel finally tore his eyes off the TV. "It'll take more than one act of defiance, Illyria, and Katniss Everdeen just signed her own death warrant - maybe her boyfriend's too. Wolfram and Hart still need another body, and they'll get it one way or another. …They can't touch her in the Capitol, though," he added slowly, thinking aloud. "They may have taken over, but they still thrive on what they've always drawn their strength from: man's inhumanity to man. That's why they've kept so many people alive, why they pit them against each other in these Games…that's why they still keep up the façade, especially in the Capitol so that the humans who've bought in to their regime don't realize what it is they're really following. They won't risk exposing themselves attacking her in their own city when they can wait until she goes home to the most isolated place in Panem and they can arrange an 'accidental' death for her. If I move fast, maybe there's a chance…" He rushed off, leaving his sentence unfinished.

Illyria followed, easily keeping pace with the vampire. "Where are you going?"

"District Twelve! I've gotta get to Katniss Everdeen before Wolfram and Hart do!"

**This is my first time responding to a challenge (i.e. writing someone else's idea) but this one looked interesting and when I found out no one else had taken it up I just couldn't resist. I haven't quite figured out where this will fit into my updating schedule along with my three other active fics, but rest assured I have every intention of finishing it. **


	2. Aftershocks

"The journey to District Twelve should only take one of what your people call weeks; we should easily arrive in time to intercept the Capitol's assassins."

"_I_ should arrive in time. I'm going alone." The words were no sooner out of Angel's mouth than he was forcibly pulled to a halt. Glancing down, he found Illyria's gloved hand on his arm. His gaze then traveled along her leather-encased arm and up to her face, which was set in an expression of consternation and perhaps even concern, though he couldn't swear to the latter.

"Angel, nearly every demon outside our walls knows your face and will kill you on sight. Venturing outside without me would be inadvisable - I may not be the warrior I was of old before my resurrection in this inferior form, yet I can offer you some protection."

That sounded a lot like concern for his wellbeing, which she didn't even attempt to justify by saying Wesley would have wanted her to look after Angel. In the years immediately following the apocalypse, she had often insisted that honoring Wesley's memory was her only reason for sticking with him, though he suspected she stayed because she had nowhere else to go. She certainly didn't want to live under the rule of Wolfram and Hart, a demonic triad she considered lower-class. Over the years, though, her protestations that she was only with him because it was what Wesley would have wanted had decreased; while Angel still wouldn't call her a friend, if only because she wasn't exactly friendly, he was now confident that she respected him for his own sake, and he trusted her without reserve.

"Thanks, but I need you to stay here. The others here look to us as their leaders; if we both left, they'd fall apart. Besides, someone's gotta feed Dru." When Drusilla found them sometime in the first few years after Panem's formation, Angel hadn't known what to do with her - he couldn't forgive her for re-siring Darla, nor could he bring himself to kill her when he saw how Spike's death had broken her and destroyed any last shred of sanity she'd managed to cling to. Ultimately he'd decided to keep her even though caring for an even more deranged Drusilla was very hard work.

"Have I done something to so displease you that you believe pouring blood down the throat of your mentally unbalanced childe is the best use for me?" Illyria demanded.

Angel resumed walking while he tried to placate her. "It's an important job. Drusilla's visions come in handy-"

"When she is cogent enough to relate them in a manner that does not defy understanding. Need I remind you of the rarity of such an occurrence? She spends most of her time huddled in the corner of her quarters, not speaking at all."

As they left their private living space and entered the common area, Alma Coin spotted them and zeroed in like a heat-seeking missile. Even though her arrival gave him an excuse to end his argument with Illyria, Angel wasn't pleased to see her; she was a powerful witch, if not quite on the same level as Willow (then again, nobody could equal Willow Rosenberg) and he knew he should be glad she was on his side rather than Wolfram and Hart's, but something about her rubbed him the wrong way. "Hello, Alma."

She ignored the pleasantry - Alma Coin was generally uninterested in friendly conversation. "Have you seen the end of the Games?"

"I keep Angel apprised of all major news from the outside world," Illyria answered before he could get a word in. "He fears that Katniss Everdeen's act of defiance will make her a target of the Capitol's wrath and means to save her from their vengeance."

Coin's eyebrows rose. "Why? If you intend to use the 'star-crossed lovers from District Twelve' to incite rebellion, the boy would be more useful."

"I don't plan on letting them kill him either," Angel said dryly.

"If we have him, I see no need for the girl at all."

"Are you saying I should leave her to die?"

"Angel would never do that," Illyria declared. "He sees an inherent value in all human life, regardless of the person's usefulness. It's not an entirely invalid viewpoint - for creatures that arose from single cells in the primordial sludge, humans are strangely fascinating. I enjoy observing the community-building behaviors of your kind; you're like a colony of ants."

Coin scowled, not appreciating the comparison, and stalked off in a huff. Illyria's bluish-pink lips curled into a slight smirk as she watched her go.

"This is why I need you to stay here," Angel told her in a voice too soft to reach any other ears. "If we both left, I'd have to leave her in charge, and who knows what she'd do with us gone."

"More importantly, I doubt she would be eager to relinquish her authority when we returned. We have always been the leaders because we were the first to fight against the new order and were responsible for gathering the others dissatisfied with this world and giving them a place to live free of those usurping upstarts' influence-" Her eyes flashed with contempt "-yet the witch desires that position for herself. Her ambition could prove troublesome; perhaps I should kill her."

Angel put a restraining hand on Illyria's shoulder. "Don't jump the gun, okay? Coin might be power-hungry, but she hasn't made any moves against us, and I don't think she ever will. We have enough enemies outside our walls; we don't need to look for more inside."

"Nevertheless, I will watch her closely until you return."

Several people glanced curiously at them as they proceeded to the elevator that would take them up out of the underground compound they called home, wondering why Angel looked even more serious than usual, as if he were embarking on a life-or-death mission, but unlike Alma Coin they stayed out of the way.

It was still daylight, but the Senior Partners, in their efforts to improve life for all demonkind, had blanketed Panem - maybe even the entire planet - in a force field similar to those used to contain the Hunger Games arenas that blocked the sun's harmful effects and allowed vampires and other nocturnal creatures to move freely during the day. Although he refused to be grateful to Wolfram and Hart for anything, Angel had to admit this was convenient.

Illyria accompanied him to the magical boundary that enclosed their aboveground territory, then stopped to commune with a tree while Angel went on alone. Once he stepped outside the wards, she disappeared from view along with all other signs of habitation; to anyone who happened upon it, this would look like just another stretch of wilderness. If that passerby was a supporter of Wolfram and Hart, they would be suddenly compelled to turn around and go somewhere else. Anyone who was against them, however, would have no trouble entering the rebels' domain.

Angel took a moment to check his map and make sure he was heading in the right direction, then set off for District Twelve.

###

Drusilla, huddled in her favorite corner of her cell, lifted her head and let out a soft wail. _Daddy's gone._ Not gone into dust like her dear Spike, just gone away somewhere else, and he'd left her with the mean blue-haired lady who Drusilla suspected might have stolen her dolls. (In fact, she had discarded them herself, after bashing Miss Edith's head in as punishment for telling her of Spike's death, but she didn't remember that.)

_Daddy's gone away, but he'll come back with a pretty little songbird…a mockingjay._ Drusilla smiled and began humming to herself. _It's been such a long time since I had a pet._

###

A week later, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark boarded the train that would take them home amid a cacophonous eruption of fanfare. Almost everyone in the Capitol was sad to see their favorite couple go…with a few exceptions. President Coriolanus Snow's only regret was that Katniss wasn't leaving in a box, and that he wouldn't get the privilege of choking the life out of her himself. He badly wanted to; his fury at her defiance, a fury he recognized as too powerful, too primal, to have originated entirely with him, demanded it. Unfortunately, as the Senior Partners' top representative on the physical plane, he had to play the role of Panem's president, and that did not include carrying out assassinations in person.

_Her blood _will_ be shed, though,_ he assured himself. _District Twelve is a dangerous place - so isolated, and in such inhospitable terrain - its citizens meet tragic ends all the time, and the same can easily befall her…or the boy._ Unable to stomach any more of the spectacle of all those people fawning over the victors, he left the balcony where he had been watching them and locked himself in his office. _One of them will die within a week, I swear. Then the body can be allocated appropriately, and the other will be left to endure the agony of life without their lover._

_ NO! THE TARGET WILL NOT BE LEFT TO CHANCE. IT MUST BE HER!_

It was fortunate that Snow had sat down at his desk, or he would have collapsed from the force of the three Senior Partners' voices booming like a thunderstorm in his head.

_THE BOY WOULD HAVE SURRENDERED TO HIS FATE, BUT KATNISS EVERDEEN REFUSED TO ACCEPT IT. NO HUMAN WITH SUCH AN INDOMITABLE SPIRIT CAN BE ALLOWED TO EXIST; IT IS A THREAT TO EVERYTHING WE HAVE WORKED FOR. SHE MUST BE SHOWN HER PLACE, THEN CRUSHED LIKE THE INSIGNIFICANT INSECT SHE IS!_

_ And she will be, _Snow promised. The Senior Partners fell silent, satisfied for the moment. Snow took a moment to recover - having Old Ones in your head took its toll - then stood up and walked over to the bookshelf behind his desk, which contained, among other things, a rather unusual bookend: a centuries-old human skull. "Wesley!"

The ghost of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce materialized in Snow's office with a heavy sigh. "Yes, President?" He couldn't remember the name of the man who'd summoned him; thanks to a 'perpetuity clause' in the employment contract he'd signed when he and the rest of the team took over Wolfram and Hart's Los Angeles branch, he had been unable to move on after his death but was instead forced to continue working for the evil lawyers-turned-dictators. After centuries of servitude, the names and faces of all the Senior Partners' vessels started to blend together - the only thing that differentiated the white-haired man in front of him from his long line of predecessors was his sickly sweet scent, like blood and roses.

"I need you to send a special forces unit to District Twelve. We have a problem that must be eliminated."

"What problem?"

"Katniss Everdeen. And Wesley? Make sure she meets an appropriately violent end."

"Yes, sir."

Wesley vanished - one of the very few advantages of being a ghost was being able to go places without crossing the distance between - and reappeared in an underground laboratory where Snow's 'special forces' were kept. "_Surge, __quia oboedisti voci meae_!" As he spoke the incantation, three hulking, mostly humanoid but grotesquely misshapen figures lumbered out of the lab's shadowy corners.

In the old world that had existed before Panem, a scientist named Maggie Walsh had attempted to create an army of super-soldiers like these by combining parts of humans and demons with the cutting edge technology of her day. Her project was a dismal failure, but with unlimited time on his hands and knowledge of demonology and sorcery that far surpassed Dr. Walsh's, Wesley was able to improve on her design. His creations were lethal, but unlike the failed prototype, Adam, they had no capacity for independent thought or autonomous action; they were dead things that could only be animated and controlled through spells.

_One of these abominations could easily tear the girl apart; she stands no chance against three,_ Wesley thought sadly as he gave the human/demon/robot hybrid soldiers their orders. She would be slaughtered, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. His punishment would be bad enough if the Senior Partners ever found out he'd commanded the hybrids to give her a quick, painless end. Whatever was left of his soul had been crushed by guilt when he mutilated the bodies of dead Peacekeepers to create these monstrosities (they hadn't exactly been innocent, but nothing they had done in life was heinous enough to earn such degradation after their deaths), and that wasn't even the worst thing Wesley had been coerced into doing since his own death, but still, he had never hated what he had become quite as much as he did right now.

**Poor Wesley. I think this may be the worst thing I've ever done to a character.**

**As you may have surmised from Alma Coin being a witch, District 13's nuclear weapons will be replaced with magical ones in this story. ****I'm also going to try to write the rebellion as more of an actual fight than a media stunt, because I wasn't crazy about that whole 'relegating the heroine to doing film spots' thing, and I can't see that being Angel's battle strategy.**


	3. Time to Pretend

**First chapter from Katniss' POV! A lot of it is just rambling as I attempt to get her characterization right, but the action does pick up toward the end so please be patient.**

Katniss breathed a sigh of relief when she and Peeta boarded the train that would take them home. For now, though, she wasn't thinking of home; she just wanted to get out of the Capitol with its ostentatious post-Games festivities and all the people, each costumed more outrageously than the last, fawning over her 'daring and oh so tragically romantic' ploy with the nightlock berries as if she'd achieved some amazing feat when she only wanted to keep herself and Peeta alive - Katniss wasn't given to emotional displays, but she thought she might scream if one more person congratulated her on her 'victory'.

It didn't feel like she had won anything. Yes, she had survived, and she'd managed to avoid the kind of permanent injuries that would leave her physically incapable of working to provide for her family, but she had not managed to escape being mentally scarred by the violence and death she'd seen in the arena, and in her dreams every night since. When she woke from those dreams in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat, she consoled herself that at least she had saved Peeta…though she didn't quite know why that was so important to her. After all, she'd never even spoken to Peeta Mellark before they were reaped together. They were perfect strangers…except for that miserable, rainy evening five years ago when he had saved her life.

After a lot of careful thought, Katniss had concluded that that was it - she felt indebted to Peeta for giving her the bread that had kept her and her family from starving and hated it, so she did everything in her power to bring him out of the arena with her as a means of repaying him. Now they were even, which should have pleased her, yet her stomach still clenched when he joined her at the long window spanning the length of the train car they were in, just like it had every time she saw him in school and desperately wanted to thank him for the bread, knowing she at least owed him that much even if she had nothing to give him that would cancel her debt, but couldn't find the words.

"So, we're going home," he said as she continued staring out the window, determinedly avoiding eye contact with him. "We made it."

"Yeah," Katniss agreed, "we made it."

"What do we do now?"

Her shoulders lifted in a halfhearted shrug. "Just try to forget, I guess."

"I don't want to forget."

Katniss' gray eyes finally flickered toward him. Of course, he was in love with her, and during the Games she pretended to fall for him too. No wonder he didn't want to forget that, even though Katniss wished he would. She dreaded the moment he discovered her feelings were faked, because he would probably hate her when he did, and she didn't want that. She wasn't in love with Peeta, but she wouldn't mind having him as a friend.

###

The celebrations that greeted their return to District Twelve were a far cry from the spectacular galas they had attended in the Capitol - these parties were smaller due to the guest list being limited to those who could fit into the Justice Building and the mayor's mansion, both of which were almost tiny compared to the Capitol's grand ballrooms, and when the attendees expressed their pleasure at having Peeta and Katniss back, Katniss thought it sounded more heartfelt than the Capitol citizens' vapid gushing; even if it was motivated more by appreciation for the extra food allotted to the victors' home district than fondness for the victors themselves, at least the emotion was sincere - but they were nevertheless a part of the show, so she followed Haymitch's advice and stuck close to Peeta, continuing to play the role of a lovestruck girl. In private, however, she found it harder to keep up the act, and she could tell that he was starting to notice.

As the last night of the week-long festival celebrating their triumphant return drew to a close, he walked her to her new house in the Victors' Village, a house that felt nothing like home, and stopped outside the front door. "I guess I shouldn't bother kissing you good night since there's nobody watching."

Katniss' heart began beating faster and she turned her eyes away. She'd anticipated their inevitable conversation about the romance that was a charade to her but not to him being unpleasant, but now that the moment had arrived it was somehow even worse than she had expected.

"You only pretended to be in love with me for the cameras, didn't you? It was clever, playing up the 'star-crossed lovers' angle to get us out of the arena… Just tell me, was any of it real?"

"I…I don't-" She meant to say 'I don't love you', because if she couldn't give him what he wanted from her she should at least be honest with him about it, but what came out instead was, "I don't know."

Peeta inhaled deeply and moved back slightly as he absorbed this. It was better than an absolute rejection, he supposed, but it still hurt that the girl he'd been head over heels in love with since they were five years old wasn't sure if she felt anything at all for him…which of course meant her displays of affection in the arena were just playacting. She had fooled him too - completely. Thinking he finally had a chance with the girl of his dreams only to learn that their fledgling relationship was merely a strategy for the Games hurt worse than if she had simply remained indifferent to him.

"What I do know," she went on in a rush, "is that Haymitch thinks I've made an enemy of President Snow by using those berries to get us both out of the arena. He told me while we were still in the Capitol that we have to keep selling the act, to make it seem like we threatened suicide because we can't live without each other, not to break the rules."

"Then that's what we'll do," he said with a decisive nod. "Whenever they're watching we'll be the perfect couple, and when they're not… When they're not watching, we won't be anything."

Katniss opened her mouth to say that seemed a little extreme, that just because they wouldn't be a real-life couple didn't mean they couldn't be _anything_, but, once again, words failed her. By the time she got her throat working again, it was too late; Peeta was already walking away.

###

Katniss woke early the next morning, ready to tackle another day…then realized her agenda was blank. There were no interviews to give, no parties to go to, no adoring crowds for whom she had to fake a smile. She was free to settle into whatever passed for everyday life now. The question was, what did a victor of the Hunger Games do when they weren't occupied with doing victor-type things? The only one she knew anything about was Haymitch Abernathy, and she would not be following his example; drinking herself into oblivion all day held no appeal for her.

Getting out of bed, she pushed aside the high fashion outfits Cinna had stocked her closet with before he went home to the Capitol, dressed in her old hunting clothes, collected her bow and arrows, and slipped quietly out of the house so as not to wake her mother or Prim. The Victors' Village lay silent and still in the hazy dawn light, though Katniss figured it was probably like that at all times of day, what with most of the houses being empty. Prior to the most recent Games, Haymitch had been the Village's only occupant. Now two more houses were filled by her and Peeta, but for the most part the place remained vacant as a graveyard, full of big, bare houses like mausoleums and air so rarely stirred by the passage of live people that it had gone stale… It was like a graveyard for the living, and she and her fellow victors were interred here in these stately monuments as if they had died in the arena after all, their lives sacrificed to the Capitol as much as those tributes who had met their end in the Games…

Suddenly unable to stay there another second, Katniss took off running. Her legs pumped in a frantic rhythm as if to prove that she was still alive, that she really had made it out, carrying her out of the Victors' Village, around the edge of the town where the merchants lived - she skirted it, not wanting to risk encountering anyone - and through the scattered houses of the Seam, all the way to the electric fence that enclosed the district. By that time she was winded, because while she was in good shape she wasn't used to the trek from her house to the fence taking so long, nor did she normally make it at a dead sprint; her momentum carried her on, though, until she slammed against the fence's chain links.

Luckily the electricity was off that day, or her new life as a victor would have come to an abrupt end. Moving slower now as she caught her breath, she worked her way along the fence to the hole she and Gale had made. _Is he out there today?_ she wondered. _Is he waiting for me?_ He might not be; everyone knew victors didn't need to hunt to feed themselves. It was foolish to take the now-unnecessary risk of going out there, especially since getting caught would probably have dire consequences with Snow's eyes already on her, but Katniss ducked through the hole in the fence anyway.

She easily found her and Gale's meeting place - the forest hadn't changed a bit in her absence; out here, she could almost pretend nothing had changed, that she had never left - sat down on a mossy old tree stump, and waited. And waited. Finally, just when she'd almost resigned herself to Gale not showing up, he appeared. He stopped when he caught sight of her, staring like he couldn't believe his eyes.

Katniss sprang up and launched herself at her friend and hunting partner, wrapping him in the fierce hug she'd wanted to give him ever since she got home but hadn't been able to; of course he wasn't invited to any of the celebrations she'd been trapped in. "I thought you weren't coming."

"I thought _you_ weren't coming, so I didn't hurry to get out here. It's not like this is your only way of getting meat now, Catnip."

"I don't need to hunt for food," Katniss agreed. "I needed to get out. It's…creepy inside the Victors' Village. Stifling somehow." She knew she wasn't doing a good job of explaining; she couldn't make sense of the suffocating feeling that plagued her in the Village herself, much less explain it to him.

"You don't like it there? But you get to live so much closer to your boyfriend," Gale said with a skeptical edge in his voice.

"Peeta isn't my boyfriend."

"He's not?" Gale's disbelief was more pronounced now. "It sure looked like he was when they showed you cozying up to him on TV every night."

"I was trying to keep us alive!"

Gale blinked slowly as he took this in. "You falling in love with him was all an act for the cameras?" Katniss nodded, and he let out a low whistle. "I had no idea you were such a good actress."

She shrugged. "It worked, didn't it? They let us both live. We have to keep pretending we're together, though, at least on the Victory Tour and any other time they can see us."

"_What_?" He was visibly horrified. "They can't make you do that!"

"It's either that or people start thinking what we did with the berries was an act of defiance," Katniss tried to explain, "and Snow won't tolerate defiance. We're only safe as long as people keep thinking we're just madly in love."

"So basically you're saying the Capitol owns you for the rest of your life. They practically own us all anyway, the way they make us spend our whole lives slaving away for them, but now they're actually telling you who you can and can't be with? Katniss, they can't be allowed to do this!"

"I hate it too! I hate that I had to volunteer for the Games to save my sister, I hate that we have the Games at all, and I hate them controlling me, but I don't know what I can do about it."

"Me either…unless we run. We could take off now and live here in the woods, like we used to talk about." He moved a little deeper into the forest and held his hand out, beckoning Katniss, but she made no move to join him.

"I can't run off now, Gale; what do you think would happen to Prim and my mom if I did? Snow would definitely think I was taking a stand against him then and they'd be killed, like Haymitch's family."

Gale's arm fell back to his side, his hopeful expression turning dejected. "I know, I know we can't do this right now, but we have to do _something_. I won't let those twisted bastards in the Capitol use you as their personal plaything!"

Katniss' eyes widened. Gale had never made a secret of his resentment toward the Capitol, but she had never heard him sound this venomous. His face was red and contorted with rage; it seemed his hatred of the Capitol had intensified while she was gone - yet another thing that had changed, and she didn't like it at all. "Gale…calm down. We'll figure something out."

Something in the way she looked at him dampened his anger, and he asked in a much more subdued voice, "Would you run away with me? If our families didn't need us here…if it was just us…would you?"

She hesitated to answer; of course she would like nothing more than to vanish into the woods where she felt most at home, to escape the scrutiny she was now under, if she could do so without endangering her family, but she had a hunch he was asking something more than whether she wanted to leave District Twelve. His remark, 'if it was just us', seemed somehow significant.

Gale sighed - her indecision told him everything he needed to know. There was something keeping her here, and it wasn't just her family, no matter what she said or even believed. He would leave everything behind for her, but she didn't feel the same way about him. Leaning in, he brushed his lips over hers. She stiffened in surprise but let him kiss her; she did not, however, kiss him back, so it ended quickly. "I had to do that at least once."

Katniss didn't seem to hear him, though; her eyes were fixed on a point over his shoulder, her face a mask of horror. A _thing_, a monster the likes of which she could never have imagined had emerged from the trees behind Gale. She didn't know what it was - it appeared to be part mechanical and part organic, maybe even part _human_ \- but it evoked such powerful feelings of terror and repulsion that she instinctively knew that it was _wrong_, unnatural, something that should never have existed…and it was headed straight for them. "Gale! Look out!"

He turned around, saw the thing, and automatically moved to shield her. The thing's paw, or hand - the clawed appendage looked disturbingly, disgustingly similar to a human hand - shot out, caught him squarely in the chest, and tossed him aside as effortlessly as if he were a ragdoll. Gale flew several yards, then crashed to the ground with a grunt of pain; he was still alive and conscious, but the impact seemed to have stunned him.

The thing didn't spare a second to see if it had killed Gale or not; it forgot about him the instant he was out of the way. He wasn't its target, but the target was nearby. It sensed her presence. Its misshapen head swiveled on its thick, bull-like neck, and a mismatched pair of eyes - one with a blue iris surrounded with white discolored by red clots from burst blood vessels and one solidly yellow except for a catlike vertical slit of a pupil, which gave it the appearance of being filled with pus, but both uniformly glassy and dead - locked on Katniss.

**I was originally going to have Gale's head torn off here, but then I thought of something else to do with him, so he's safe…for now. As safe as any character ever is in one of my stories. I'm leaning toward Everlark for the main pairing, though, after seeing Mockingjay Pt. 1. At least as much as there's any pairing - this isn't shaping up to be a very romantic story with horrifically hideous demon assassins always butting in.**

**Next chapter: I will finally introduce Katniss to Angel!**


	4. Guardian Angel

**Very sorry for the long wait; this is the chapter where worlds collide and Angel finally meets the HG characters (there's even an unanticipated guest appearance by Haymitch) so I spent a lot of time trying to get their interactions just right. **

For an instant that seemed to last an eternity, Katniss froze, transfixed by the thing's unnerving gaze - lifeless as those eyes were, there was no doubt that it was looking at her, that it was somehow _aware_ of her - then it lumbered forward, its strides eating up the distance between them alarmingly fast, and the survival instincts that had gotten her through the Hunger Games kicked in. Scrambling backward to the stump where she'd left her bow, she loaded it in record time and fired with her usual lethal accuracy, putting her arrow through the monster's loathsome, bloodshot blue eye.

The creature didn't fall, didn't even stagger; it continued toward her, not even seeming to notice it had taken a shot that should have been fatal. That was when Katniss' shock and dismay gave way to outright fear, because she didn't know what to do now that her trusty weapon had failed to stop this thing. She could try to outrun it, but it was too close for her to stand any chance of escaping now even if she had been willing to leave Gale behind. It was almost on her now, reaching out with a huge, clawed hand from which graying tatters of decayed flesh dangled…

Just before its thick fingers closed around her throat, a long, gleaming blade came spinning through the air and caught the creature's outstretched arm, slicing it neatly off at the elbow. Startled and confused, but mostly grateful, Katniss looked around and saw that the blade had been thrown by a man in a long black coat who had just appeared in the distance; that he'd hit his target from so far off spoke volumes about his strength and marksmanship, assuming the monster really was his target. Maybe he'd been aiming for her.

"Get down!" he yelled even as he drew an object Katniss recognized as a hand grenade out from inside his coat. He lobbed it in her general direction, and she automatically obeyed his order, throwing herself behind the stump and putting her arms over her head. A split second later, the grenade detonated with a deafening boom and an earth-shaking, bone-rattling concussion that ceased almost as soon as it began, leaving an almost unnatural silence and stillness in its wake.

Peeking over the top of her stump, Katniss saw that the thing that had attacked her and Gale was in pieces on the ground, and the man in black was approaching her hiding place. She had immediately deduced from his deadly aim and the strength it would have taken to throw such a long blade with such precision that he must be a formidable fighter, and seeing him up close reinforced that impression. He was positively bristling with weapons - she noticed two swords strapped across his back, more straps crisscrossing his chest that held, among other things, the small pouch from which he'd taken the miniature but devastating grenade, multiple holsters holding an assortment of knives and other sharp instruments, even a short-handled battleaxe, and that wasn't even counting whatever he might have hidden under his coat.

He also had the haunted, hardened look in his eyes of someone who had seen and experienced things no one should have to go through, the same look Katniss saw every time she looked at Haymitch and was starting to glimpse in herself and Peeta. This man was no washed-up old drunk like Haymitch, though, nor was he a kid like District Twelve's newest victors; he was older than her and probably had more combat experience than she could even imagine, yet a lot younger and in much better shape than her mentor.

"Who are you?" she asked warily, instinctively gripping her bow tighter.

"My name is Angel. Are you okay?"

Katniss blinked; that seemed like a dumb thing to ask someone who'd just been attacked by a mutt too horrific even for the Hunger Games. If something like that was shown on TV, everyone in the Capitol would be too scared to watch. "My friend's hurt." She gestured to where Gale was groaning and clutching his chest as he tried to sit up.

Angel went over to check Gale, then pulled him to his feet, causing him to let out a yelp of pain that he quickly bit off. "Well, you're gonna have bruises, maybe even a cracked sternum, but you'll live. Who are you?"

"He's Gale Hawthorne," Katniss answered for him. "What was that thing? I've seen all kinds of muttations, but this was different." Most of the genetically altered animals that roamed Panem, such as mockingjays, their predecessors the jabberjays, and the deadly tracker jackers, while distinguishable from normal animals, were still very similar to their non-mutated relatives. The monster that had attacked Gale and Katniss, on the other hand, didn't look like any naturally occurring species she had ever seen…except maybe a human. She was terribly afraid that this creature, or at least some part of it, used to be human; the wolf mutts in the arena had been bad enough, and they were only made to _resemble_ the fallen tributes. The idea of creating a mutt out of an actual person was too awful to put into words. "I've never seen one that couldn't be killed," she said instead, "but putting an arrow through its brain didn't even affect it."

"It's hard to kill something that isn't really alive in the first place." Angel retrieved a piece of its skull and showed her how the remnants of its shattered jaws were still mindlessly gnashing together. "The best you can do is take it apart so it's less of a threat."

"How'd it…attack us if…not alive?" wheezed Gale, who was having trouble drawing enough air into his battered chest.

"We don't have time for a biology lesson; all you need to know right now is that it was sent here to kill Katniss, and since it failed, there'll be more."

"Sent?"

"Snow," she declared, dismay clouding her features as the realization of how accurate Haymitch's dire predictions had turned out to be hit home.

Angel nodded. "He couldn't murder you in the Capitol with all those people watching your every move, but out here you're alone, unprotected."

"And there are _more_ of these things?"

"Yeah. I haven't seen one in years since they're only used for high-priority assassinations, but he's probably got a whole army of them."

"Then he could've sent another one after Peeta!" She bolted back toward Twelve.

Angel followed her, leaving her friend with the cracked sternum in the dust; he wasn't the one Snow's assassins were after, so he should be perfectly safe out in the woods, and Angel didn't have time to wait on him - Katniss was his priority. He caught up with her near the electrified fence and grabbed her around the waist just in time to stop her from running into it at full speed.

"Let me go!" she shouted as he snatched her back. "I have to get home! If Snow's sent a mutt for Peeta - he lives next door to my family!"

"You can't help him if you get barbecued."

She quit struggling as soon as the words penetrated her brain and listened, and sure enough, there was the low hum of electricity coursing through the fence. "But it was off when I went through before…" A stricken look passed over her face as she realized it couldn't be a simple coincidence that sneaking out had been so easy, but now that she wanted back in the fence was on; when the power was turned off, it typically stayed off for a day or two. "Could they have purposefully turned it on to trap me outside?" She hadn't thought there were any cameras along this section of the fence - though if she'd asked, Angel could have told her Snow had other, less detectable ways of watching people - but she supposed it didn't matter how Snow's spies knew she had gone outside the district's border. The important thing was that she _was_ outside, and almost everyone she cared about was inside. "I have to get through - my family's in there!"

"I think I've got something that'll help." Angel reached inside his coat and pulled out a tiny electromagnetic device which he used to short out the electric current, and Katniss dove through the opening, snagging her clothes on the sharp wires in her haste. He couldn't follow her - the hole wasn't large enough for him to fit through with all his weapons strapped on - so he vaulted over the top of the fence instead and hit the ground running, determined not to let her get too far ahead. With other assassins undoubtedly on her trail, he couldn't let her out of his sight.

###

A lot more people were out and about when Katniss charged through the district for the second time that day, and they all gawked at her, though for the first time since winning the Hunger Games, she wasn't the center of attention; the heavily armed stranger on her heels had stolen her spotlight. They weren't sure if he was with her or chasing her, but she wasn't about to stop and assuage their concerns or satisfy their curiosity about who he was and where he'd come from; she never even broke stride until she reached the Victors' Village.

Once it was in sight, she came to a staggering halt, staring in disbelief at what lay before her - because she saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. The Victors' Village was a picture of serenity that seemed incredible in the wake of her terrifying encounter in the forest. She recovered quickly though, and jogged the short distance to Peeta's house.

"Peeta!" Katniss jammed her finger on the doorbell while hammering on his door with her other fist. "Peeta, open up! Open the door! _Please_!"

He took his time answering her desperate summons - in fact there was a moment where he considered ignoring her altogether - but at last he did appear. Not wanting to show any emotion toward her after her revelations the night before, he took care to make his face blank first, but it was a wasted effort; his mask of indifference crumbled when he saw her ripped clothing, disheveled hair, and wild eyes. "Katniss, what hap-?"

Before he even finished speaking, she seized his arm and dragged him outside. "Snow just sent a mutt to kill me," she hissed in a voice barely above a whisper.

"What? Are you hurt?"

"No, some guy blew it up." She glanced around for her rescuer, but Angel was nowhere to be seen. "It hurt Gale, though-" Peeta's expression darkened at the mention of Gale, which Katniss failed to notice "-and Angel said there'll be more-"

"Angel?"

"The man who blew up the mutt. Peeta, are you listening to me? Snow isn't letting us get away with surviving the Hunger Games, and he's sent an army of mutts worse than anything you can imagine to kill us!"

"Actually, he'll probably only kill one of you." Angel had reappeared, seemingly out of thin air. "He only needs one more body - you don't want to know why - and I'd bet he wants it to be Katniss, but he might settle for you if he can't get to her." Seeing Peeta open his mouth to protest, Angel continued before he got a word in. "You're not safe here; taking you out inside the district will be harder since he's trying to be subtle about it, but his assassins are capable of almost anything, and they're relentless. Sooner or later they _will_ find an opening in whatever defenses you think you have, and when they do you'll be dead. No warning, no mercy, just a brutal, bloody death, and there won't be enough of you left to bury in a matchbox."

Peeta and Katniss glanced at one another, each gauging the other's reaction. What Angel was saying seemed outrageous, unbelievable…yet they did believe him. After all, Panem's highest form of entertainment was watching children fight each other to the death, so they were under no illusions about the world they lived in or the kind of man President Snow was. Katniss in particular had no trouble believing Snow was out to get them, because there had been a moment at the crowning ceremony when she looked straight into his eyes as he placed the crown on her head, and saw pure evil looking back at her.

It was over in the blink of an eye; he had smiled and suddenly looked like just an ordinary man again, as if he had righted a mask that had slipped out of place. What she had glimpsed behind that mask shook Katniss to her core. "What can we do?" she asked Angel. "Isn't there some way we can stop this?"

"Forget it; there's no reasoning with Snow, and he won't stop until one of you is dead. Your only chance of staying alive is to go somewhere out of his reach."

"A place Snow can't get to?" Peeta said incredulously. "There's no such thing."

"Yes there is, but we'd better get moving if we're going to make it there; every minute we waste standing around talking brings them closer. Or you can just sit here and wait to be slaughtered, along with whoever else gets in the way."

"We're coming with you," Katniss said at once. "My family-"

Angel grabbed her arm as she started toward her house. "You'll have to leave them. You and Peeta are the targets, not them. Until we get to safety, being close to you will put them in more danger than they'd be in alone."

She reluctantly accepted the logic in that. "I have to at least tell them I'm leaving, and why - and get some supplies for the trip."

Angel nodded; he hadn't had to pack for his journey to Twelve, but humans needed food and all sorts of survival gear that he didn't. "Tell them to get out of the house; it won't be safe there until Snow realizes you've left the district. You should do the same," he instructed Peeta. "Say your goodbyes if you've got anyone to say goodbye to." He had noticed while scoping out the Victors' Village that Peeta, unlike Katniss, lived alone.

"My family lives in town, so I'll stop by our bakery when we leave." _Not that it'll do any good._ Mrs. Mellark would scoff at the idea that they needed to take precautions against mutts and death squads, and she had a way of browbeating the entire family into going along with whatever she thought they should or shouldn't do. Then Peeta remembered someone else who might be more receptive to his warnings. "Haymitch should know what's going on too - he lives close to us."

###

Haymitch grumbled loudly about being dragged outside before he'd had his morning cup of booze-laced coffee, but he shut up when he saw Angel, apparently shocked into speechlessness. Peeta took advantage of his silence to explain what had happened to Katniss, and Haymitch didn't seem surprised that the two newest victors had been targeted for assassination. Nor did he seem very concerned about the threat his house's proximity to theirs might pose to his own life; he actually laughed at the suggestion that he should leave with them. "Your new pal's right, boy, you need to get as far from here as you can as fast as you can. What you don't need is an old drunk slowing you down."

Peeta argued for a while but finally gave up and went to fetch the things he needed from his house. Once he was gone, Angel approached Haymitch. "You put on a good front, but I can tell you're taking this seriously."

"Of course I am." Haymitch's fingers twitched as if aching to grasp a bottle that wasn't there. "People think I drink because everyone I cared about was killed after I won the second Quarter Quell, but that's only half the reason. I also drink because I saw what killed them. You really think you and the kids can outrun one of those things?"

"Let me worry about Katniss and Peeta; you worry about the rest of Twelve." Once Snow realized his intended victims had escaped, he was sure to retaliate.

From the suddenly sober look on Haymitch's face, he knew what was coming. "We're gonna need to evacuate the whole damn district." His eyes narrowed. "How'd you get the kids to agree to leave when their home's probably going to get burned to the ground? That doesn't sound like the Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark I know."

"I told them they'd put everyone in more danger by staying, which is the truth."

Haymitch nodded his agreement. "That girl could be the spark that starts a revolution - I knew it the minute she pulled out those berries, Snow knows it, and I guess you're thinking the same thing. I've heard rumors about rebels from outside the districts, but all these years there's never been anything more than that, so I doubt you'd have poked your head aboveground unless you expected her to be a game changer."

"Can we count on you?"

"Yeah, I'll get as many people out as I can." Haymitch sighed grumpily. _Looks like I won't get to have that drink today._ "Where do I take them?"

Angel gave him a humorless grin. "Since you've heard of us, I'm sure you can figure it out."

Haymitch's eyes widened; he'd heard whispers that the rebel group, if they actually existed, were the surviving remnants of District Thirteen, but he thought that had to be crazy talk. Surely no one could have lived through the razing of the defunct district…except it seemed that some people had. Before he could ask any questions about how they'd managed that, Katniss and Peeta reappeared along with Katniss' mother and sister, who had gathered everything they wanted to take back to their old house in the Seam - but first they had to be peeled away from Katniss. Prim was particularly unwilling to let her big sister go so soon after being reunited with her, and only unlocked her arms from Katniss' neck when Haymitch whispered in her ear that she would see her sister again soon.

"I'll come home as soon as it's safe for you to be around me, little duck," Katniss promised. Then she tore herself away, knowing that if she didn't leave now she never would, and trudged down the road to where Peeta and Angel waited.

"You're doing the right thing," Peeta tried to reassure her as the three of them started walking. "I know it's hard to leave your family again, but at least now Snow's mutts won't-" He broke off then, because they had reached the gates of the Victors' Village.

Every Peacekeeper in Twelve was lined up to meet them with weapons pointed straight at their hearts.

**Hope everyone's reactions to Angel were okay; I attributed Haymitch's lack of detailed knowledge about the rebels to the fact that they've stayed very well hidden for several years, and until Katniss came along he wasn't really interested in anything he couldn't drink. As for Peeta not flying into a panic over his family's safety like Katniss did, he didn't see the demon mutt and so, while he believes her claim that Snow's trying to kill them, how dire their situation is wasn't impressed as deeply on him. Plus I'm not sure how close he is to his family since in Catching Fire he told Katniss that if she died he'd have nothing to go back to, and the only other Mellark I really know anything about is his abusive mother.**

**Also, I included the detail about the wolf mutts being made to look like the dead tributes, which was omitted from the movie, because that felt spookier than generic wolfy creatures.**


	5. Get Out Alive

Angel immediately stepped forward, placing himself in front of Katniss and Peeta. "Is there a problem, officers?"

"You're trespassing," barked Head Peacekeeper Cray. "Take him in, men. Arrest the victors too, for associating with a criminal."

No one rushed to obey these orders; arresting a stranger who'd stuck his nose where it didn't belong was one thing, but victors were supposed to be untouchable. Just yesterday there had been parties and parades in their honor, for crying out loud!

Taking advantage of the Peacekeepers' momentary hesitation, Angel took a pair of cloaking bracelets from his coat and handed them behind his back to Katniss, whispering, "Put these on when I say, and hold your breath," while simultaneously reaching for a combination teargas/flash bomb.

"What's the matter with you? I said _arrest them_!" bellowed Cray. Drawing his gun, he took a step forward.

When his taking the first step inspired some of his bolder colleagues to follow suit, Angel hurled the bomb into their midst. "_Go_!"

Feeling the metal ring vibrate against her skin as she slid it onto her wrist, Katniss glanced down just in time to realize she had become invisible before the air filled with eye-watering, lung-searing noxious gas accompanied by a blinding flash of white light. She lunged toward where she'd last seen Peeta, finding him by feel, and together the two of them stumbled away from the cloud of teargas. Thanks to Angel's warning, they hadn't suffered much exposure, but they were still coughing when they reached the stone wall that enclosed the Victors' Village.

The Peacekeepers were caught completely off guard, and by the time the air cleared Angel, who for some reason wasn't on the ground coughing and clawing at his eyes like they were, had disarmed over three dozen of them. They still outnumbered him by more than five hundred to one, though, and there simply wasn't time to remove all their weapons before those farthest from the point of detonation started to recover.

"Angel, look out!" Katniss screamed as one of them pushed himself up on an elbow and raised his gun in a wobbly hand, but too late - the bullet hit him in the lower back, missing his spine only because the Peacekeeper's hand was shaking too hard to aim properly. She whipped out her bow, nocked an arrow, aimed…and Cato's face suddenly appeared on her target, reminding her that unlike the monstrous mutt she had unthinkingly shot at in the woods, the Peacekeeper was a person. A person whose life she was about to snuff out, just like those poor frightened children in the Hunger Games…

"Katniss?" Peeta's voice came from somewhere on her right. "Katniss, what are you doing?"

"I have to help him, but I can't…I can't shoot!"

"You don't have enough arrows to take them all down; shooting at them will only give away our position. I'm sorry-" She felt him wince as more Peacekeepers began getting up and firing at Angel, who dodged an amazingly large number of their shots and even managed to knock out or break the arms or necks of several shooters…yet as more and more of them added to the hail of bullets, it became clear that he wasn't going to make it out. For every Peacekeeper he took out there were five more still shooting at him, and with their aim improving as the effects of the gas wore off, they were doing enough damage to slow him down. "There's nothing you can do," Peeta continued. "Look, he's not even trying to get away from them; I think he wants to keep their attention long enough to give us time to run. We can make it over the wall here."

They climbed over the stone wall to find most of District Twelve's population gathered on the other side near the open wrought iron gates, whispering anxiously to each other and craning their necks to see what was going on. Still wearing their cloaking bracelets, Peeta and Katniss skirted the crowd unseen and made their way down the main road. Halfway through town Peeta stopped, took his off, and ducked into the Mellarks' bakery. After a second's hesitation, Katniss also removed her bracelet, becoming visible once more, and followed him.

Inside the bakery, Peeta's attempt to warn his family that they might be marked for death wasn't going over well, mainly because no one could hear him over his mother's enraged screeching. "-Got out of the Hunger Games alive - something I never would have thought you were capable of - you could have had it made, could've been rich and famous and never had to work another day in your life, but you couldn't even manage not to screw _that_ up, could you? You little fool!" Mrs. Mellark raised her rolling pin to whack Peeta over the head.

He flinched back, but the blow never came; Katniss grabbed Mrs. Mellark's wrist, stopping her arm in midswing. "Put it down. _Now_."

Mrs. Mellark's eyes bulged with fury, making her look like the mean old witch Katniss had always thought of her as. "You filthy little Seam brat!" she shrieked. "You-!" She broke off as Katniss twisted her wrist, forcing her to drop the rolling pin.

"I may be a filthy Seam brat, but at least I don't hurt people I'm supposed to care for. No one deserves to be treated like that - especially not Peeta." Dropping his mother's arm as if it were a dead rat, Katniss snatched his sleeve, spun him around and marched him toward the door. "Come on Peeta, we're leaving."

He made no effort to fight her but glanced back over his shoulder at his family, who all avoided his gaze. "Remember what I said. You might not be safe."

Then Katniss hustled him outside and they set off down the road again at a brisk pace, but without their cloaking devices this time. Now that she could see Peeta, it didn't take her long to feel his stare on her. "What?"

"No one's ever stopped her before," he said quietly. "Thank you."

She awkwardly shrugged off his gratitude. "Like I said, you don't deserve that." No one should be subjected to such mistreatment by their own mother, least of all him. He was too…good, though how he'd managed to stay that way while being raised by the witch was a mystery to Katniss. Besides, she now felt a certain responsibility to protect him since going along with her 'suicide pact' ploy had put him in mortal danger.

There was nothing to protect him from at the moment, though; the Peacekeepers must be finished with Angel by now, but they hadn't yet realized that Katniss and Peeta were no longer inside the Victors' Village. They made it all the way to District Twelve's perimeter fence without encountering another person…except Gale, who was heading home to the Seam. Naturally, once he saw that they were packed up as if for a long trip, he wanted to know where they were going, so Katniss repeated what Angel had said about needing to find a place where Snow's mutts couldn't reach them.

"But you have no clue where that is. How long do you think the two of you will last out there alone with those _things_ chasing you? You'll be dead meat!"

"And if we stay, everyone else will be! At least this way we might be able to lead them away."

Gale agreed, though he clearly wasn't happy about it. "Let me come with you then. I can help you find food in the woods-"

"No, I need you to stay here and look after Mom and Prim. Angel thought they should go back to the Seam, and I persuaded them to, but I'm not a hundred percent sure nothing will find them there."

"Where is your new friend anyway? You'd think he could at least help you find a safe place, if it exists."

Katniss swallowed hard. "The Peacekeepers got him. They showed up at the Village to arrest us and he…sacrificed himself so Peeta and I could escape."

Gale frowned. "Sorry to hear that. He seemed all right."

"He was more than all right. He saved my life."

Just then Peeta, who had been keeping his eyes and ears trained on the district behind them, reported hearing people coming their way. "Sounds like they've widened their search area."

"We have to go." Katniss seized Gale's shirt. "Promise you'll take care of my mom and Prim, okay? Promise me!"

Gale assured her he would although, considering what they were up against, neither of them were at all certain of his ability to keep that promise.

###

Katniss and Peeta went through the fence, departing District Twelve for the last time, and Gale went to check on the Everdeens - come what may, he would protect Katniss' family or die trying - but before he reached them, he was accosted by Haymitch. "Well, well, if it isn't the 'cousin'. Come to visit your dear old aunt?"

"Yeah, I heard about the trespasser breaking into the Victors' Village, so I thought I'd better make sure she and Prim are okay. Excuse me." He tried to push past Haymitch, but the older victor caught his arm in a surprisingly strong grip and turned him around.

"Listen up, boy, the Everdeens are not okay. Nobody in Twelve is safe anymore."

Gale frowned, wondering if this was just drunken rambling…but Haymitch appeared more sober than he'd ever been. "But Katniss and Peeta escaped," he said slowly. "I just saw them go."

"Thank God for that. But what do you think our illustrious president will do when he finds out they slipped right through his fingers? You have no idea how vindictive that man can be. He'll want to punish them for running, and hurting the people close to them won't be enough for him. Snow would wipe an entire district off the map just to teach two kids a lesson."

"Then we have to warn people!"

Haymitch tightened his grip on Gale's arm, preventing him from dashing off to start doing just that. "Yes we do, but we can't just run around banging on doors, whipping everyone into a panic. We need to organize an evacuation - 'organize' being the operative word, because a bunch of refugees who've never been outside their cozy little town stumbling around outside the fence with no provisions will never make it to Thirteen."

"District Thirteen?" Gale asked incredulously.

Haymitch nodded. "I've heard rumors that District Thirteen wasn't destroyed as completely as the Capitol wants us to believe, that the rebels survived somehow and they're still there, and that man who came here today confirmed it. We can't count on any help from them in getting out of Twelve alive, though. Now that their guy's dead, we're on our own."

###

When night fell, Katniss and Peeta stopped walking and built a small fire to cook the pair of squirrels she killed, preferring to save the food they'd taken from their houses in case she was unable to find game later.

"Some day, huh?" Peeta remarked as they sat by the fire, eating squirrel meat and some berries he'd picked (after checking with Katniss to be sure they weren't nightlock). "We've gotta be the only two people in the history of Panem to go from victors to fugitives in such a short time."

"I'm sorry about all this," Katniss said quietly.

Of all the responses he might have guessed she'd give, this was the last one he would've expected. "Sorry for what?" he asked, puzzled.

"You're in this mess because of me."

"I'm alive because of you. If you hadn't been smart enough to think of a way for us both to win, I'd be dead now."

"You could still end up dead. I thought I was saving us, but maybe all I did was buy us some borrowed time."

"So what? Borrowed or not, I'm grateful for whatever time we have. And even though I know you don't feel the same way, there's no one I'd rather spend it with than you."

Katniss shrugged and flashed him a weak smile. "I can think of worse people to be out here with." She couldn't honestly say there was no one else she wanted by her side, because she wished Angel was there; he'd seemed to know a lot about the threats they faced, and had a plan to counteract them. Without him, she and Peeta could do nothing more than wander aimlessly, trying to stay one step ahead of whatever hunted them now.

_He could've told us where to go so we'd be safe before he got himself killed,_ she thought bitterly as the weight of fresh guilt and sorrow settled over her. The man didn't even know her, yet he had given his life for hers - and she, the strong, cunning victor everyone so admired, had been powerless to save him. Just like she hadn't been able to save Rue. At least she had paid tribute to her friend, though; in that brief moment, with the simple gesture of gathering flowers for her, she had shown all of Panem that the little girl's death _mattered_, had restored some of the humanity the Hunger Games tried so hard to strip from them. She wished she'd had a chance to do the same for Angel.

###

No one else was interested in giving him a sentimental sendoff, of course; when Cray reported that his men had fatally shot the intruder who had caused a disturbance in their district, his superiors replied with orders that the body was to be burned immediately. Cray swiftly dispatched a pair of Peacekeepers to carry the body bag containing Angel to the incinerator on the outskirts of Twelve where most of the district's garbage was disposed of while the rest of their forces continued searching for the missing victors.

Just as they reached the squat gray cinderblock building that housed the incinerator, something happened that the two Peacekeepers were completely unprepared for - the dead weight in the bag they carried between them suddenly came alive and violently twisted out of their grip. As they stumbled back in shock, the man they thought was dead ripped through his plastic shroud, seized the one who hadn't retreated far enough, and knocked him out with a single well-placed blow.

Angel then turned on the one who was still backing away, gibbering about how he couldn't be alive - they had checked very carefully and hadn't found a trace of a pulse - and lunged, driving him into the wall behind him. Not being at his best due to the numerous bullets he'd taken earlier, Angel couldn't risk the Peacekeeper overcoming his fright and shooting at him again or raising the alarm, so he bashed the Peacekeeper's head against the cinderblocks. He had a chance of surviving, albeit with a severe concussion, but he would be out cold for hours.

Angel then followed the fence to the hole Katniss used on her hunting trips - if she had any sense, she would have taken advantage of the diversion he'd provided and escaped into the woods. As he walked, he pulled out a flask like the one Haymitch used to keep a constant supply of liquor on hand - although, being a vampire, Angel didn't keep alcohol in his - and drank deeply; he would have preferred to conserve his blood rations, but he needed the extra nourishment now that he had over a dozen gunshot wounds to heal in addition to, he suspected, more of the Senior Partners' creatures to fight before reaching the safety of the rebel base.

Katniss' and Peeta's scents lingered around her secret exit, confirming that they had indeed left District Twelve together. _Well, at least they made it out of the frying pan… Too bad we all know where that leads._ Angel put away his flask of blood and began tracking his charges, hoping they hadn't already been found by something else.

**So, did I manage to make anyone wonder for a moment if the Peacekeepers had magic bullets that had really killed Angel?**


	6. Run All Night

Katniss woke with a start, her heart pounding. All around her, the woods were dark and quiet; everything seemed peaceful, yet her body was vibrating with tension, like a taut bowstring. She reached out, groping in the blackness until she found Peeta beside her - she didn't dare look around for him, because she was inexplicably, irrationally positive that something was closing in on them, creeping toward them unseen in the night, and that the something would pounce if she diverted her eyes from watching for its arrival for just one second - and shook him.

"Peeta." Her voice wasn't even a whisper. "Peeta, wake up." He rolled over, trying to shake off her hand. She thumped him. "Wake up!"

"Huh? Katniss?" He sat up slowly, blinking at the unexpected lack of light that told him it was way too early to be up. "What is it?"

"Shh! Listen."

Peeta strained his ears to catch whatever noise had alarmed Katniss, and then he heard it too: a faint, high whistle like something shooting through the air toward them at great speed.

"Run!" Katniss shouted, and they scrambled away seconds before a missile hit the ground where they had just been sleeping. The force of the blast picked them up and hurled them several yards; Katniss landed face down with a paralyzing impact that crushed all the air out of her and lay there gasping, her mind going blank with terror when she couldn't get a breath. Her lungs felt deflated, as unable to hold air as old balloons, and her back felt singed, but when she glanced over her shoulder and saw what had fired at her, she somehow got back on her feet.

The mutt was larger than the first one she'd encountered, over eight feet tall and built like an ox, with leathery brown skin that peeled back from its mouth, leaving its sharp yellowish teeth and mottled purple gums exposed. In contrast to the oversized mouth, it didn't appear to have any eyes, or if it did they were hidden in the weird contours of its grossly misshapen head; even if it couldn't see, though, it didn't seem to have any trouble zeroing in on Katniss, and she knew her only chance of surviving was to stay three steps ahead of it, because it could take her apart with one blow. It swung its huge fist at her like a wrecking ball and she leaped aside and circled it, making it spin to keep her in sight, which wasn't easy for something so large; when it lunged for her she threw herself between its feet, popping up behind it.

Roaring in frustration, the mutt turned around once more and lashed out at Katniss a third time, forcing her to jump to the side again. Her leg muscles twinged in protest, and she realized she couldn't keep this up forever; she would eventually tire, but she doubted the same held true for her opponent. She couldn't see any way of ending their deadly dance, though, because if she ran it would be able to shoot at her again. The only way of avoiding another missile strike was to stick so close to the thing that it couldn't bring its long-range weapon to bear, but that kept her within its reach and forced her to stay in constant motion.

_It's gotta have a weakness - something I can use against it… _Hadn't Angel said something about how to beat a mutt like this? Her heart sank as she recalled him saying these things couldn't be killed since they were somehow not alive in the first place, but right after that he'd said they were less of a threat if you took them apart, like he had with his hand grenade. Katniss didn't have that kind of artillery, but the creature did, and if she could get her hands on it…

She circled behind it, figuring the mutt must keep its rocket launcher strapped on its back, but all she saw was a container for extra missiles - ammunition with nothing to fire it. That made no sense but there was no time to ponder it, because the mutt's fist was flying at her again - still its right, she realized. So far her attacker had only used its right hand while its left arm hung stiffly by its side.

Hoping she had finally found a flaw to exploit, Katniss darted in closer and discovered that the left arm wasn't an arm at all but something metallic, some mechanical prosthesis grafted on in place of the creature's limb. As she tried to get a closer look, her feet slowed minutely - and that tiny pause was all the mutt needed to catch her dead to rights. Its fist shot out…and a rock almost as big as its head flew out of nowhere and hit it right between the eyes, knocking it slightly off balance so she was able to dodge the blow that would have been the end of her. "Hey leather head! Over here!" Peeta shouted, waving his arms to attract the creature's attention.

"Peeta, no!"

The mutt bellowed angrily but didn't abandon its one-sided fight with Katniss to go after Peeta; instead it simply raised its left arm to point at him, and as the moonlight glinted off the metal limb, she finally saw where it kept its rocket launcher. "Run, Peeta!"

He hesitated, unwilling to abandon her, and Katniss, seeing that he wasn't going to get out of the way in time, grabbed the weaponized arm, throwing all her weight into dragging its muzzle down. With the missile falling a couple inches short thanks to her intervention, Peeta just managed to escape by taking shelter behind a boulder that would otherwise have been blown to bits and turned into shrapnel. Katniss wasn't so lucky. Before she even had time to be relieved that he was safe, a hand so large it almost completely encircled her body clamped down on her back and pried her off the metal rim she was clinging to.

Having captured its prey at last, the mutt roared triumphantly and lifted her into the air while she squirmed and beat uselessly at the thick fingers locked around her torso…then it slowly tightened its grip.

_At least it didn't get Peeta,_ Katniss thought as she felt her ribs start to give under the inexorable pressure. _Once I'm gone, Snow won't send any more monsters and everyone will be safe. I saved the boy with the bread after all._

###

Just as Katniss' vision went dark, Angel burst onto the scene. Having heard the rocket that had been fired at Peeta detonate as he closed in on the teens and their pursuer, he knew he was about to walk into a situation his old friends from Sunnydale would have described as 'hairy', so he entered the fray with his own explosive ready - only to realize once he was in sight of the combatants that he couldn't use it. Unlike the first one, this creature had actually managed to get Katniss in its clutches; if he blew it up, she would burn too.

Dropping his grenade, Angel drew a sword instead and leapt at the monster, viciously hacking at the hand holding Katniss. The mutt's head snapped around and it was clear that, eyes or no eyes, it saw Angel…then it dropped Katniss, the command to kill her overridden by the sighting of an even higher-priority target.

"Glad to see I still top the most wanted list. Here I was worried the Senior Partners had forgotten me since the flashy new girl came along." As he spoke, Angel unleashed a flurry of blows, punching and kicking with such relentless fury that the huge beast stumbled back a few steps. It tried to strike back, but the vampire was too quick; he ducked and dodged while getting in a few hits of his own, driving the mutt where he wanted it until finally, with one last well-placed kick to the center of its chest that utilized every bit of his inhuman strength, he sent it tumbling into the dense, thorny undergrowth surrounding a tightly packed stand of trees.

While the mutt thrashed around in confusion and entangled itself further (if Wesley's creations had a fatal flaw, which he'd been able to get away with building into them by citing how making Adam too clever had ultimately caused Maggie Walsh's downfall, it was that in addition to having no free will they also lacked basic intelligence and problem-solving skills) Angel retrieved his discarded hand grenade and jammed it into the creature's open, snarling mouth. Then he hurriedly backed away, but this time he wasn't fast enough and got showered with putrid gore when the mutt was blown apart.

Katniss and Peeta stared like they were seeing a ghost - which they probably thought they were, especially now that he looked like the Bloody Ghost of Christmas Past - as he walked over to where they had retreated (or more accurately, where Peeta had dragged her) after he distracted the mutt and told Katniss, "We've gotta stop meeting like this."

Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly several times before she managed to choke out, "Aren't you…dead?"

Luckily, Angel had had plenty of time to concoct a story while he tracked her and Peeta. "I was wearing body armor when the Peacekeepers shot me, and then I had to play dead until they dumped me with the rest of the trash. I caught up with you as soon as I could."

Something about his explanation bothered Katniss, but she couldn't put her finger on why, and it sounded plausible enough on the surface, so she decided to accept it. After all, it wasn't like she was unhappy to see him. "Oh. That's good." Sensing that Peeta was about to speak up, possibly to pick Angel's tale apart, she talked over him. "I'd have been a goner if you hadn't shown up when you did."

"How bad are you hurt?"

She shook her head and lifted her shirt, closing her eyes to block out what she was sure would be a grisly sight. It was a good thing she did; the broken rib poking through her skin would've been too much for the hunter who was so ironically squeamish about human injuries, though it was almost hidden by the mutt's handprint etched in purple-black on the dark red backdrop of lighter bruises. Peeta pushed the bone back into place and bandaged it with some sterile cotton they'd brought from District Twelve, while Angel searched through his own possessions and located a half-full bottle of healing potion amongst all the weapons. He hadn't bothered to take any after being shot since it didn't work well on the undead, but he remembered it being very effective on humans.

Katniss sipped the strange medicine warily, grimacing at the taste, then offered some to Peeta, who, like her, had suffered some scrapes and burns when the mutt's initial missile strike sent them flying. He refused, insisting that her chest injury took precedence. "You just don't want any after you saw me making faces," she retorted, jabbing an accusing finger at him.

"Maybe," he agreed mischievously, bringing a reluctant grin to her lips.

Angel's next words wiped it off. "You're right, we should save it for her; she'll need it to stay on her feet."

"Stay on her feet?" Peeta asked incredulously. "Are you crazy? She needs rest!"

"I know, but she can't get it here. We're still being hunted."

"But-"

"He's right," Katniss interrupted, trying not to let her voice give away the fact that she really wanted to lie right there until it no longer hurt to breathe. She couldn't do that because if she laid around too long, she might fall asleep, and then the nightmares would come…or another mutt would. Angel had already put himself in harm's way once to protect her, and she didn't want him to have to do it again - she didn't want Peeta doing it at all. "We should move on."

"Katniss," Peeta began in a tone that made it clear he was going to argue the point if she let him. She didn't.

"I don't want to see another of those things, and I can walk. My legs are fine; it's everything above the waist that's the problem. I'll be okay so long as you don't make me laugh."

This was an easy condition for him to keep to since their situation was decidedly not humorous; it was even less so after Angel kept them on the march for the rest of the night and all through the following day. "How is he doing it?" Katniss grumbled as the evening shadows began closing in. "He's been on the move longer than us, and he doesn't even seem tired!" Indeed, despite the brief rest they'd been able to snatch before the rocket launcher mutt and Angel caught up with them, Katniss and Peeta were lagging far behind the enigmatic warrior.

"Well, I am, and I can tell you are too. I vote we make him stop." So, next time Angel circled back to check on their progress and encourage them to pick up the pace, they told him they weren't budging another inch until they'd had a chance to rest and eat.

"Oh, right. I should've remembered you'd need to do that." It was perhaps an understandable mistake given that it had been a very long time since he'd been on an extended trek with anyone other than Illyria, whose stamina easily matched his, but still. And of course, in his rush to reach District Twelve in time to save them, he hadn't thought of grabbing anything to feed the humans. "Do you have food?"

"In here," Peeta answered, reaching for his backpack.

"I'd planned on hunting so we could save that," Katniss said glumly. Her sore ribs were less painful than she'd expected thanks to Angel's strange, foul-tasting medicine, but something told her she shouldn't push her luck by shooting yet.

"I can hunt." Angel pulled a collapsible crossbow from one of his coat's inner pockets and set off into the woods. He returned a short while later with a fat groosling – Katniss noted with a certain degree of admiration that, like her, he shot his prey right through the eye – but ate none of it, preferring to stick with his blood rations.

Katniss and Peeta were at first startled when he took out his flask, then disgruntled when they realized they were once again relying on an alcoholic to get them through a dangerous situation, then puzzled when he showed no signs of intoxication. "Maybe it isn't booze in there after all," Peeta whispered hopefully.

Katniss shrugged, unconvinced even though she'd be happy to believe there was no danger of their guide slipping into a drunken stupor. "What else could it be?"

Before Peeta could make a guess as to what Angel might be drinking, the subject of their discussion looked up sharply, as if he could hear their whispers over the crackling of the small fire he'd allowed them to build to cook the groosling after declaring there were no mutts nearby (though how he could be so certain was a mystery). His dark eyes stared piercingly into their blue and gray ones for a long, uncomfortable moment before they looked away, feeling like kids who'd been caught passing notes in class. "We should probably put the fire out," Peeta muttered.

"Yeah, you two need to get some sleep," Angel quickly agreed. "I'll keep watch." It was a perfect excuse to steal some alone time so he could think…about how to tell them he was a vampire. Obviously he couldn't keep it a secret forever; they'd been travelling together less than two days and they were already noticing that he wasn't like them. He wished he could attribute that to some particular astuteness on their part, but he suspected it was due more to him being badly out of practice at blending in with humans after all those decades holed up underground with his rebels, most of whom were supernatural creatures like him.

Their 'underground' movement - both literally and figuratively - hadn't been very successful at recruiting humans; they had a few, but most humans were too afraid, preferring to remain virtual slaves (and food sources for their invisible demonic overlords) in the districts with their own kind rather than follow Angel and Illyria, who were just too different. As long as the humans stayed where they were, providing free labor and churning out despair and resentment for the Senior Partners to feast on, Wolfram and Hart was too powerful for Angel and his vastly outnumbered band.

After the unqualified disaster that was his last attempt at overthrowing them, which had appropriately become known as the Dark Days throughout Panem, Angel had realized that what he needed was a human ally, somebody who was one of the people, ordinary enough to be relatable yet extraordinary enough to rally the nation, but in almost seventy-five years he hadn't been able to find such a person…until now. Katniss Everdeen was his best hope - humanity's best hope - but all that could be ruined if she discovered his true nature at the wrong moment, in the wrong way, and got scared off like so many others had been.

Unfortunately, he didn't have time to compose a speech explaining to two kids who probably didn't even know what a vampire was that he happened to be one, because at that moment his train of thought was derailed by an earsplitting scream from Katniss.

**Well, I hope you enjoyed the last appearance of the demon mutts for a while - as much fun as them stalking Katniss through the woods has been, we do need to move on to District 13. By the way, if I didn't do a good enough job describing this one and you want a better picture of what it looked like, you can look up Nemesis from Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which was what I visualized while writing this.**

**Next up: Can Katniss handle learning the truth about Angel?**


	7. Out of the Woods

**Very sorry about the long wait; as some of you may know, I was focusing on finishing one of my other projects. Now it's done, so I'm finally going to quit neglecting my other stories! **

Angel raced back to where he'd left Katniss and Peeta and found her thrashing on the ground, still screaming. For a second he thought she was being attacked by something invisible, but then he realized she was only having a nightmare - and Peeta was just sitting there watching, as if unsure what to do. "Hey, can you get your girlfriend to calm down? Every demon within ten miles is gonna be drawn to this racket."

"Um, okay. I can try." It didn't seem like the best time to explain the complicated nature of his non-relationship with Katniss, which probably didn't allow for offering comfort after nightmares, and Angel's concerns about noise were certainly valid, so he moved closer and gave her shoulder a tentative shake. "Hey, Katniss, wake up."

Her cries stopped as soon as she saw that she wasn't still in the arena, and he quickly removed his hand. "Peeta?"

"It was just a bad dream. You're not back there." He didn't tell her everything was okay, that it was all over and she was safe, because none of that was true. Even if they made it to Angel's mutt-proof hideout, it would be a long time before either of them really felt safe again. Maybe they never would. He got up to go back to his previous sleeping spot, but her barely audible voice stopped him.

"Peeta?" she whispered again.

He didn't turn around, but she could tell he'd heard her; his spine stiffened as if an electrical jolt had just passed through him. "What?"

"Um…" She wanted to thank him for waking her up, and it seemed like that should be easy after everything she'd been through in the last twenty-four hours…yet talking to Peeta's rigid back was somehow more daunting than facing down a ten-foot, rocket launcher-toting mutt. "Never mind," she muttered, rolling over so that her back was toward him. Even so, she was very aware of him walking away from her.

###

Around noon the next day, they stopped at a river to refill their water bottles, and Angel took the opportunity to wash the reeking mutt blood out of his clothes before the stench led anything to them; there were plenty of unpleasant things roaming out here that had a keen nose for blood. Katniss and Peeta, meanwhile, went off to scout and forage in order to give him some privacy. She doubled back before their agreed-upon meeting time, though; her chest still hurt, leaving her short of breath, so she decided to sit down while she had the chance.

Near the riverbank, she found Angel's coat drying on a tree branch, with all his gear spread out on the ground below. She stared at his vast array of weaponry for a moment - it made quite an imposing sight laid out on full display, especially since she couldn't even identify a few of the deadly-looking items - before her eyes were drawn to a more recognizable yet equally mysterious object: the flask that seemed to be Angel's sole source of sustenance.

She'd offered to share hers and Peeta's provisions with him this morning only for him to once again turn it down in favor of his drink of choice, and now she was seriously concerned; even Haymitch, the most dedicated alcoholic she knew, had never foregone real food altogether. Peeta still insisted that the flask's contents might be completely innocuous - maybe it held some kind of energy drink potent enough to take the place of food - or if it really was liquor, Angel seemed to have a strong enough tolerance for it that maybe they didn't have to worry about him passing out on them, but Katniss wasn't satisfied. With their lives in his hands, she needed to be absolutely certain Angel was reliable…and with the flask sitting there unattended, it would be so easy to put her doubts to rest…

A quick glance at the river showed Angel still scrubbing his shirt, unaware she had come back, so she picked up his flask, unscrewed the top, and sniffed. Her first reaction was relief at not smelling the pungent fumes that always hung around Haymitch, quickly followed by uneasiness as the sharp odor reminded her of…President Snow? It was nothing like the overwhelming artificially enhanced scent of roses that seemed to seep out of the president's very pores, yet it was still a smell she associated with him, a less pleasant aroma that the cloyingly sweet perfume couldn't entirely mask - the smell of blood!

Katniss dropped the cool metal container as if it had burned her, without stopping to replace the top; the thick red liquid that spilled out couldn't be mistaken for anything else, confirming what her nose had already told her. She scrambled to her feet and backed away, wishing now that she'd found whiskey in there after all, because she would rather be following a drunk through the wilderness than a sick freak who drank blood. _I need to find Peeta - we've gotta get away from him!_

Automatically slipping into her silent hunter's tread, she set off in the direction he had taken, with her senses on high alert in case Angel tried to sneak up on her, yet somehow she failed to hear him coming before he appeared right in front of her. "Katniss-"

She snatched up the nearest object with any hint of potential usefulness as a weapon, which happened to be a fallen branch with one reasonably pointy end, and brandished it. "Get away from me, you freak!"

"If you'll just let me explain-"

"Explain drinking blood?" Her tone made it clear that she didn't think there could be any justification for such aberrant behavior.

"I did save your life twice; the least you can do is hear me out."

He had a point, Katniss admitted to herself - sick freak or not, she was still very much in his debt. Besides, if he was planning to string her and Peeta up and drain their blood into one of his little bottles, he'd already had plenty of opportunities to do it.

Angel seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because his next words were, "And put that stick down. I'm not going to hurt you." In actuality, he was thinking that he didn't want to get accidentally staked by a girl who got in a lucky jab with a branch.

Relieved that she wasn't going to have to try defending herself with a piece of wood, she dropped it and crossed her arms over her chest. "Start talking."

"Let's get Peeta back here first; it'll be easier to go through this with both of you at once."

Katniss agreed; despite the fresh awkwardness that had sprung up between her and Peeta after last night, she welcomed the presence of another normal person. When they caught up with him, she hurried to his side and stuck close. "I found out what's in Angel's flask. You were right, it isn't liquor."

"Well, that's good, right?"

"Not really. He's been drinking blood."

Peeta's eyes widened in horror, and he took an instinctive step back from the vampire. "But- How could- _Why_?" He turned to Angel. "Do you have some kind of disease?"

"It's a little more complicated than that."

"Are you a mutt?" Katniss demanded.

"No, the Capitol didn't create me. I'm a vampire." As he'd expected, Katniss and Peeta had never heard that word before. People in District 12 had enough real things to be afraid of, like starvation, explosions and cave-ins in the mines, and black lung disease, that they didn't need to scare themselves with stories of bloodsucking monsters. "…And you have no idea what that means. Do you know what a demon is?"

They didn't, so Angel did his best to explain; the simple answer, that demons were 'creatures from hell' was inadequate because, with religion practically nonexistent in Panem and Twelve's citizens too preoccupied with staying alive to give much thought to the afterlife, they had no concept of hell as anything more than a swearword. In the end, they got the basics, although they had a little trouble wrapping their minds around the supernatural aspect.

"What does this have to do with you?" Katniss asked impatiently when he finished explaining that part. "Those things Snow sent to kill me were demons, right? You're nothing like them."

"That's because I'm only part-demon. Vampires are made by infecting a human with demon blood."

"So it is kind of like a disease," Peeta ventured.

"Kind of, but like I said, it's more complicated. When a vampire wants to change someone, they drain the victim and feed them their own blood. That way, when the person dies and their soul moves on, a demon takes over their old body. It has all the memories of its vessel's human life and some of their personality - the demon might even think it _is_ that person - but it's not them anymore. Everything they used to be gets twisted into something evil. For a long time after I became a vampire, I was no different…until I murdered the wrong girl. Her family punished me by restoring my human soul so I could feel the guilt of everything I'd done, and since then I've been trying to atone by helping people wherever I can. And of course I don't feed on humans anymore."

With his story at an end - at least as much of it as he felt they needed to know right now; everything else could wait until they reached the safety of his base - he looked into his audience's wide eyes and wondered if he'd dumped too much on them too fast. There wasn't time to ease them gently into the realities of their world, though, not with the Senior Partners out for their blood. Besides, they were the same age Buffy had been when the weight of the world was placed on her shoulders, and they ought to be tougher than she was at sixteen; after all, Buffy had lived a rather sheltered life before her first Watcher approached her. No one could say the same of Katniss, or even Peeta, unless not knowing the true nature of the forces that made life in the districts so miserable counted as being sheltered. Then again, perhaps expecting them to adjust to living side by side with the supernatural as well as Buffy had was holding them to too high a standard; Buffy Summers had been a truly remarkable woman…

Angel stopped himself there and forced her out of his head - even after all this time, she still pushed her way to the forefront of his mind more often than he cared to admit, but he couldn't afford to be distracted by thoughts of his lost love right now. "So now that you know what I am, are you coming with me or would you rather take your chances out here alone?"

Katniss glanced at Peeta, trying to gauge what he was thinking and wishing the two of them understood each other as well as her and Haymitch. Fortunately, on this matter their thoughts were perfectly aligned - although they found the idea of vampires unsettling, Angel didn't seem threatening at all compared to the things hunting them, especially since they had no reason to believe he meant them harm. In fact, as he'd pointed out, they would already be dead if not for him. Hoping like she'd rarely let herself hope for anything that she wouldn't regret it later, Katniss declared, "We're with you."

She and Peeta slept closer together that night, huddled back to back. Now that they knew there were demons prowling the wilderness - of course they'd already known there were dangerous mutts out there, but the fact that these monsters weren't manmade somehow made them scarier - they both felt safer with another human nearby.

###

The trip between Districts 12 and 13 normally took seven days on foot, at least for humans. Traveling solo, Angel had made it to Twelve in three. With Katniss and Peeta in tow he had to move slower, but they still reached their destination in record time thanks to the humans being highly motivated - especially at the end of their journey, when, about half a mile outside Thirteen's boundaries, Angel's enhanced senses told him they weren't alone.

"What's wrong?" Katniss asked, a wary edge creeping into her voice as she noticed Angel suddenly shifting into high alert, moving even more quietly than usual and listening to the woods around them with intense concentration.

"Something's coming."

"What kind of something?" Peeta asked nervously, already suspecting what the answer was going to be. Judging by Angel's behavior, whatever was coming was probably not a squirrel or wild turkey.

Sure enough, the vampire replied in a terse near-whisper, "Demon. I think it's caught our scent, so stay calm and keep walking - slowly. Don't speed up."

"Why not? If there's a demon coming, shouldn't we get away from it as fast as we can?"

"No!" Katniss grabbed Peeta's arm in case he was about to bolt. "Don't act like prey," she hissed.

"She's right; if we run, it'll chase us. If we just go along minding our own business, there's a chance it won't bother us." Angel sniffed the air again, this time smelling a change in the creature's pheromones as it went into hunting mode. _Crap._ "Or it could be hungry. Okay, you can run now - run! Move!"

They didn't need to be told twice. The three of them broke into a mad sprint, although Angel held himself back, staying behind the humans so that if their pursuer caught up with them, it would be more likely to attack him first. After several long, heart-pounding (at least for those whose hearts could still pound) moments, the border of Thirteen came into view, roughly three yards ahead. In the same instant, the demon burst out of the trees a mere two feet behind them.

Knowing they would never make it in time, Angel snatched Peeta and Katniss by the backs of their shirts and carried them the remaining distance in one flying leap. They tumbled to the ground inside the safe zone, finally catching a glimpse of the thing chasing them as they bumped over the grass - a pale, scaly-skinned beast with oversized lobster claws for hands.

_Now it'll get us for sure,_ Katniss thought as she finally came to a bumpy stop, too winded and dizzy to jump up and start running again. Instead of pouncing, though, the creature suddenly halted, looked around, shook its head in apparent confusion, and wandered off. "What…just…happened?" she panted.

"I told you you'd be safe when we got to my place. We have a barrier that keeps intruders out."

"Like the one at the Tribute Center that keeps kids from jumping off the roof?" Peeta asked when he'd caught his breath.

"Similar, except that one stops everything. Ours let us through, but it repels anyone and anything that's on Wolfram and Hart's – I mean the Capitol's – side."

"How does it know the difference?"

"Magic."

This answer was met with some skepticism; of all the outrageous things Angel had told them, the idea that an ordinary person could defy the laws of nature just by saying the right words and using the right herbs and artifacts was almost harder to swallow than his tale of how the world used to belong to nightmarish creatures that made Snow's mutts look cute and harmless in comparison.

"Why'd you call the Capitol 'Wolfram and Hart'? What does that mean?"

"I'll get to that. There's still a lot I have to tell you, but we should get inside first. Barrier or no, hanging around in the open can still be dangerous."

"Inside where?" All Katniss saw was a bunch of overgrown ruins, none of which looked stable enough to take shelter in. "What is this place?"

"It looks sort of familiar…" Peeta ventured, and then his eyes widened in realization. "Katniss, we've seen it on TV, except they made it look like a smoking wasteland. This is what's left of District Thirteen!"

"You're half right," Angel confirmed. "Thanks to our defenses, the Capitol hasn't been able to get close enough to shoot new footage in years, so when they feel like reminding everyone what they can do to their enemies, they use old images from right after the Dark Days. This used to be Thirteen, but it isn't all that's left. Follow me."

He led them to what appeared to be just another patch of grass…until he spoke the password to release the concealment spells hiding the underground complex's entrance. The grass shimmered like a mirage and vanished, revealing a metal hatch. Climbing through it, they descended a short ladder into a small room that held an elevator, which they rode much further down into the complex proper. They stepped out into another world, a world of immense caverns and mazes of tunnels branching off in all directions, a world inhabited by an assortment of creatures no one from the districts of Panem could ever have imagined. Some of the faces in the crowd looked human, some were clearly not, and some couldn't be identified either way.

Seeing Katniss' and Peeta's astonished expressions as they took in the vast subterranean structure before them and its colorful population, Angel allowed himself a brief attempt at a smile. "Welcome to the real District Thirteen."


	8. Dangerous Creatures

**Hey everybody, I'm very sorry for taking so long to come out with a new chapter. As some of you already know, I've started graduate school, and it's turned out to be a lot more time-consuming than I anticipated. I do intend to continue all the stories I'm currently working on, but I don't have as much time for writing now as I used to, so please be patient. I promise to update as often as I can.**

It didn't take the denizens of Thirteen long to notice that Angel was back; relief at their leader's return quickly turned to curiosity when they saw who he'd brought with him, and soon the new arrivals were surrounded by a large group of gawkers. Katniss glared fiercely at them - her time in the Capitol had given her a deep loathing of being stared at, and unlike the colorful, vapid Capitolites, some of these creatures had more than two eyes to stare with. She noted with some satisfaction that even Peeta, who had been the consummate crowd-pleaser before, during, and after the Games, looked unnerved.

Then Angel cleared his throat, and the multitude of eyes turned toward him. "Okay, everyone, you all know Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark from the Hunger Games, right?" There was a general murmur of assent from the throng; they might have sided with Angel over Wolfram and Hart, but they were still demons, so most of them didn't share his aversion to televised blood sports. "Well, their grand finale wasn't a big hit with the Senior Partners, so they need to lay low for a while - and this is about as low as you can get."

This statement earned a few hesitant grins and nervous chuckles - it sounded like it was meant to be funny, but Angel wasn't exactly known for his sense of humor, so no one knew whether they were supposed to laugh or not. The vampire was dismayed by their tepid reaction; he was aware that he had reverted to what people used to call his 'dark, brooding persona' over the last few centuries, after losing all the friends who had once brought out his lighter side, but his people skills must be even rustier than he'd thought if his allies were afraid to laugh when he tried to crack a joke - which, come to think of it, he hadn't done in about a hundred years.

"While they're here," he went on briskly, "I expect you all to treat them like everyone else here - no funny business." Conflicts between the small number of humans in Thirteen and other residents who were naturally inclined to see them as prey were rare, but only because those humans had quickly shown any demons who tried messing with them the error of their ways. Angel wasn't sure if being veterans of the Hunger Games would afford Katniss and Peeta the same respect - after all, the things they'd faced in the arena were child's play compared to some of these creatures. In fact, something scarier than any mutt the Capitol ever dreamed up was heading their way at that very moment.

Everyone scattered at Illyria's approach, but she ignored them as she marched up to Angel and looked him over as if to establish for herself that he really had come back in one piece. "I am pleased that you survived." It was impossible to tell from her tone if she was really happy, or disappointed that he hadn't suffered at least a slight injury as payback for leaving her behind.

"Yeah, I did, but don't worry; next time I go on a field trip, I promise not to leave you with Dru."

Satisfied by the assurance that she wouldn't be relegated to babysitting duty again, she turned her attention to the two humans. "And you succeeded in your mission to bring back the victors of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games. Human custom dictates that you should perform introductions now, does it not?"

"Sure. Katniss, Peeta, meet Illyria, my right-hand...uh..." He trailed off, at a loss for how to explain Illyria in five words or less.

"Woman," she supplied. "It's simpler to use the terminology that corresponds to the anatomy of the husk I inhabit. Besides, after living so long in this shell, I now identify as female."

"Okay, that works. My right-hand woman."

"You're working with someone from the Capitol?" Katniss' mistaken assumption was perhaps forgivable - after all, the Capitol was the only place she'd ever seen anyone so...colorful. Unfortunately for her, Illyria wasn't the forgiving type.

"From the Capitol? Foolish mortal, how dare you suggest that I, whose armies trampled continents into dust in an age when gods trembled at the sound of my name, would ever lower myself to dwelling among the mindless sycophants who worship beings that were as far beneath me as the merest insect-"

"Take it easy, Illyria," Angel interrupted; he usually didn't mind listening to her reminisce about her glory days, but he didn't think Katniss and Peeta were ready for one of her 'when we were muck' speeches yet. "She didn't mean it like that – right, Katniss?"

"Right. I just didn't think they had blue hair anywhere else." Upon closer inspection, however, she had to admit that Illyria didn't seem at all like a Capitolite; her leather armor, while certainly eye-catching, was nothing like their garish frippery, her harsh intonation was the polar opposite of Effie Trinket's trilling accent, and her crystalline eyes weren't at all vacant - there was a piercing, feral look there that Katniss had definitely never seen in any Capitol citizen. Despite Illyria's lurid coloring, the overall effect was more frightening than frivolous.

Illyria came closer, and Katniss fought the urge to back away; it was ridiculous for her to feel intimidated by a woman who wasn't any taller or more muscular than herself, but there was something about having those unnaturally vivid azure eyes boring into her that made her feel like she had shrunk to the size of an ant.

"So you object to my complexion, human?" Illyria tilted her head contemplatively, and every trace of blue vanished from her face and hair - her ashy pallor became a warm, normal skin tone, her eyes turned the color of chocolate, and her straight hair, now completely brown, twisted into soft curls. Even her armor changed, transforming into a demure eyelet blouse and flowered skirt. "Does this form appeal to you more?" she asked in a lilting drawl.

Katniss stared at her in openmouthed astonishment. "How did you...?"

"I was a god once," Illyria snapped, her voice regaining some of its customary hard cadence while also retaining a trace of Fred's accent. "Altering the aspect of this shell requires but a thought." She glanced at Angel, remembering that he still had mixed reactions to her taking on Fred's appearance. "I can also adopt other guises, if you wish."

"I think that's enough showing off for one day. I'm going to show Katniss and Peeta where they'll be staying, and I'll talk to you later." Although he would never tell Illyria as much, this was another reason Angel had refused to let her accompany him on his retrieval mission - aside from needing her to hold down the fort in Thirteen, he was afraid she would have scared the humans away before he could even begin to earn their trust.

"Sorry about her," he muttered once they were out of range of her extremely sharp hearing. "I know she comes on a little strong-" Katniss snorted at his phrasing, while Peeta mumbled something about understatements "-but she's okay once you get to know her."

"So you're friends? You actually like her?" Peeta tried not to sound too skeptical, but a hint of disbelief bled through anyway.

"I've known her since before Panem was formed, and we've been through more than you can imagine together - she's even saved my life a time or two - so yeah, I guess we're friends...but don't tell her that." He stopped somewhere in one of the residential areas and unlocked the doors to a pair of unoccupied rooms by punching a numerical combination into their keypads. "Here you go. It's pretty spartan, but your neighbors in this wing are either humans or non-aggressive demons, and you can be next door to each other - unless you'd rather share?"

Katniss looked away, and Peeta quickly said that wouldn't be necessary. Their reactions struck Angel as rather odd for two people who were supposed to be a couple, especially after they'd slept so close together almost every night during their travels, but he shrugged it off. If they were having some kind of lovers' quarrel, it wasn't his problem.

###

Left alone for the first time in days, Katniss paced her new room for a while, but that got old fast - it wasn't very big, and Angel definitely hadn't exaggerated when he called it spartan - so she ventured out to explore the underground labyrinth that was District Thirteen. Before long, she found herself in a completely unfamiliar area, with no idea how to get back to her quarters. She'd been through what seemed like miles of corridors and around countless corners, but every hallway looked the same; there were no markers she could use to find her way back, or even to assure herself she wasn't just going around in circles, nor did there seem to be anyone around that she could ask for directions.

Just as she started to worry that she had wandered into some off-limits section of the compound where no one would ever find her, leaving her forever trapped under the earth just like her father, a strangely accented voice that seemed to come from somewhere close behind her asked, "Are you lost, little girl?"

Katniss whirled around, surprised to find a pale brunette in a long, gauzy dress where she was positive no one had been a second ago. How had this woman managed to sneak up on her? "Who are you?"

"Such a pretty little mockingjay," the strange woman cooed, reaching out to touch Katniss' hair. "Will you sing for me?"

"What?"

"I used to have to have a bird just like you to sing to me, but I kept it in a cage and it died. Spike said he'd get me a new one that wasn't dead." Her face suddenly crumpled into an expression of utter devastation. "Spike doesn't bring me presents anymore."

Realizing the woman wasn't right in the head, Katniss tried to take a step back, but the hand on her braid tightened, holding her head firmly in place. "Ouch! Let go!"

Her captor giggled and playfully shook her head. "Daddy will be cross when he finds out, but it's been such a long time since I had a treat... Now be a good girl and don't scream, please."

Katniss wasn't planning on screaming, being more annoyed than frightened - until the other woman's waxen features transformed into the visage of a demon, with pronounced ridges above eyes that were now yellow and sharpened, elongated teeth. Then she yelled at the top of her lungs and struggled fiercely to free herself, to no avail; every nerve in her scalp screamed as the deceptively strong creature yanked on her braid, wrenching her head to one side. Unable to get leverage for any kind of aggressive or evasive maneuver with her head trapped in that awkward position, Katniss could do nothing but watch in horror as the woman leaned in to bite at her exposed neck...

"Drusilla!"

The sound of her sire's angry voice stopped Drusilla cold just before her fangs punctured her would-be victim's skin. Knowing she had been well and truly caught with her hand in the cookie jar, she made no move to resist when Angel seized her by the back of the neck and pulled her away, effortlessly breaking her grip on Katniss with his other hand. "What are you doing out in the halls?"

"I wanted to see our new mockingjay, but the naughty little bird wouldn't sing…and then I got hungry. I've not had anything decent while you've been gone." She looked back at Katniss, and her pout changed into a covetous stare the human girl was all too familiar with; all the less fortunate of District Twelve looked like that while gazing through shop windows at food they couldn't afford. "Can't I have one little sip? It won't kill her."

"No," Angel said sharply. "Go back to your room."

Drusilla scowled and slunk off, muttering some very uncomplimentary things about the animal blood diet Angel had put her on.

"You're just letting her go?" Katniss demanded. "She tried to bite me!"

"I'm sorry; she usually doesn't bother anybody-"

"She's crazy." Although she didn't come right out and say it, it was obvious to Angel that Katniss was wondering why he had allowed such a dangerous individual into his base. Of course, nearly everyone in Thirteen was dangerous in some way, but most of them had their heads screwed on straight enough that they didn't try to eat their allies.

"Yes, she is, but she has to stay here. I'm...responsible for her. She's family."

Katniss nodded understandingly. "I know what that's like - you have to take care of your family no matter what. Even if they're...like that," she added, recalling the terrible time after her father's death when her mother had let herself sink into depression. Angry as Katniss had been with her for effectively abandoning her children when they needed her most, she had never given up on her, even if there were times when she honestly believed the only thing stopping her from doing so was the knowledge that she and Prim would end up in the community home if Mrs. Everdeen died. Seeing that Angel took his family obligations as seriously as she did gave her a feeling that was both reassuring and disconcerting - that maybe she and this supernatural warrior from the mythical age before the dawn of her world were more alike than she thought.

###

That night, Drusilla was added to her nightmares of the arena, joining the pack of dead tribute wolf mutts in hunting her. Katniss jolted awake, heart racing, drenched in cold sweat, her mind still full of the image of fangs gleaming in the moonlight, and groped blindly in the empty space behind her that had been occupied by Peeta for the past few nights...but he wasn't there.

Of course he wasn't - she remembered now that they had made it to Thirteen, where they were supposedly safe. The monsters surrounding them here were on their side (at least in theory) and even if there were some loose cannons like Drusilla, their quarters came with locked doors to keep out unwanted visitors, so there was no need for her and Peeta to cover each other's backs. Still, she felt oddly bereft without him.

As if on cue, there was a knock at her door. Katniss slid out of her narrow bed and padded the short distance across the room to open it, and there he was. "Peeta?"

"These walls aren't very thick," he said almost apologetically, and she realized he must have heard her cry out as she woke up. "I thought maybe you wouldn't want to be alone."

Katniss said nothing, but she didn't try to block him as he stepped through her doorway either. It was only when he sat down on her bed that she objected, albeit feebly. "Are you sure? Now that we're here, it doesn't matter how much noise I make."

"Actually, it does. My bed's right on the other side of this-" Peeta tapped the wall above the head of her bed "-and I won't get any sleep if I have to listen to you tossing and turning all night. You'd be doing me a favor, really."

"Okay then." She got in bed with him, except this time they didn't curl up with their backs pressed together - the bed, which was really just a shelf built into the wall, wasn't wide enough for that, so instead they had to lie face to face, and somehow their arms ended up wrapped around each other because there really wasn't anywhere else to put them. Considering everything that was (and wasn't) between them, she expected it to feel awkward, but instead it felt right, like that time during the Games when they were together in the cave and once or twice she almost forgot she was acting. "Peeta," she whispered as her body relaxed into his embrace, "stay with me?"

Just before sleep reclaimed her, she heard him say, "Always."

###

Angel was also trying to get some sleep but, like Katniss, was awakened by Drusilla, except in his case she showed up in the flesh. "What is it, Dru?" he asked warily when his enhanced senses registered her creeping into his room. She hadn't behaved aggressively toward him in a long time, but there was no telling what she might do if she was still angry over his refusal to let her bite Katniss...and then there were times when she got caught up in flashbacks to the days when he was more to her than just her sire and ambushed him for an entirely different reason.

"You said I should tell you what the stars whisper to me."

"You had a vision? Tell me what you saw."

Drusilla put a finger to her lips. "It's a secret. I'll whisper it to you."

Setting caution aside for the moment, Angel let her sit down beside him and put her mouth to his ear; he had learned it was best to indulge her quirks if he hoped to get any useful information out of her.

Ten minutes later, he was dragging a disgruntled Alma Coin out of bed and ordering her to do a scrying spell to verify Drusilla's vision. The witch grumbled a little, not at being roused at such a late hour so much as the undignified manner of the rousing, but complied.

"Well?" Angel demanded when she snapped out of her clairvoyant trance.

"It's true," she said grimly. "Snow knows Everdeen and Mellark are out of his reach now, and he's retaliated. There's nothing left of District Twelve but ashes."


End file.
